The Tower of Babel

Passage:

Familiarize yourself with this passage:

Genesis 11:1-9
Up to this point in the Bible, the world still had one language. When Noah can off the ark, God told him he should be fruitful and spread out over the whole earth. After some time there were many people again, but they did not obey God; they did not spread out over the whole earth. They got comfortable in their one place and thought they no longer needed God. Instead, they came together to make a name for themselves. They though if they worked together, they could build a tower that would reach the heavens to be with God. When God saw their determination to stay together, he came down and confused their languages. So, the work on their tower stopped and the people were forced to spread out.

Object lesson:

As you tell the story, begin building a tower out of blocks (or whatever other stackable material you have at hand). Build it fast so that when you get to the part of the story when God comes to look at the tower, your tower is very tall, and you can stand to look at it. Then, as you tell the kids that God confused their languages, knock down the tower and scatter the pieces around. Explain to the kids that, although God did not knock down the tower, he did create confusion among the people by changing all their languages, just like you did when you knocked it over and scattered it around the room. Explain to the kids that because of the confusion, the people could no longer finish working on the tower, and had to move to other parts of the world. This is why we have so many different languages all over the earth.

Memory Verse:

Psalm 8:1
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

Jesus Connection:

God knew that no matter how tall these people built their tower, they could never reach heaven by themselves. The people did not need a tower that reached heaven, they needed a Savior who came down from heaven and brought them up! The way to be with God was not through a tower, but through a person. The people would never have been able to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven, so one day God would have to send heaven down to earth in the form of Jesus!

Songs:

“Jesus Loves the Little Children”

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world;
Red and yellow, black and white, They are precious in his sight;
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Jesus loves the little children, all the Children of the world.
English, Irish, Dutch and Jew, and the little Norwegian too.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Games and Activities:

Sponge Tower

Supplies Needed:
• A bunch of cheap dish sponges, cut into thirds or quarters
Directions:
1. Allow the children to work together to build the tallest towers with the strips of sponges. Have them experiment with differently shaped structures.
2. If you want to make this into a competitive game, have twice as many sponges and split the kids into two team and see which team can make the tallest tower at the end of a certain period of time.

Crafts/Projects:

Tower of Babel

Supplies Needed:
• Empty paper towel roll tubes
• Small paper plates
• Brown and green pain
• Small rectangular pieces of dry sponge
• Sponge paint brushes
• Cotton balls
• Scissors
• Glue
• Brown construction paper, cut into a circle, and then cut again into a spiral, with the Bible verse from the tower of Babel story written along the spiral.
Directions:
1. First, using your dry sponge, make brick patterns along your tube by dipping into your brown paint and sponging on, leaving gaps in between each "brick." Once painted, let dry. (You may have to do this portion of the craft first, set it aside and do a different activity, and come back later.)
2. After your paint has dried, use a little glue to attach each end of the paper spiral to each end of the tube, then spread out evenly to look like stairs going up your tower.  Glue the tower to your base and glue your cotton balls to the top, for clouds.
3. Lastly, we added some green and brown paint to the base
4. You may need to see the pictures of the project in order to have a better understanding of the directions. Click on this link and scroll down part way to see step by step pictures of how to assemble this craft. http://homeschoolingmom2mags.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-tower-of-babel.html

Coloring Page:

*This coloring page would be best printed on a landscape setting, rather than on portrait.